I had been working on a file for 20 to 30 hours. I had been saving on a regular basis too. This evening, I was adding a few things and I noticed Tinderbox was starting to act weird. I stopped to save and then Tinderbox crashed. When I went to reopen the file, it was still there but there was nothing in it. It was like I was starting a brand new file. What do I do? I would hate to lose a lot of work because of this.
This is unlikely to be Tinderbox’s fault. But you should be able to recover a recent version of your file from Time Machine or iCloud.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/recover-word-pages-mac-documents/
Yes. I can report the versioning function of iCloud drive works perfectly. I was able to recover nearly my entire file. I’ve never had a file become corrupted since I moved to SSD drives a few years ago. I guess there is a first time for everything.
For those of you not familiar with the versioning feature, it’s under the file, revert to option. If you are saving directly to iCloud like I was, iCloud will automatically create backups without a Time Machine drive hooked up.
In detail: this wasn’t a corrupted file. It was completely empty — as if someone had pressed Select All, Delete, and Save.
I mention this because there is a temptation among experienced users to hit Save immediately when things go haywire. Back in the day, this was the right thing to do! But it’s counterproductive now. Instead: Stop. Pause to assess; what exactly is wrong? Then, if you’re not quite sure things are OK, Save A Copy of the document under a new name. That way, you have the last version and the current version right at your fingertips.
Of course, as here, you have the backups for security. But you don’t see those. And you can never have too many backups.
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I did hit save twice within a few seconds. The second time the beach ball cursor was spinning so that was likely the cause. I’ll have to resist the urge to try and save when things look like they may be about to go south.